Was 'Ten Forward' always on the ship?

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^ Maybe just the name.

Meaning: When the ship was first launched, possibly it didn't have a fancy name that was cute to say. But calling it "Ten Forward" gave it an air of sophistication and made it 'trendy' for everyone to go there.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

It 's entirely possible 10 Forward started out as a generic mess hall and was turned into a trendy bar when Guinan came aboard.

 

[Melakon]

I thought there was mention of it in Sternbach & Okuda's TNG Technical Reference Manual, but either I'm mistaken or my eyes have gotten so bad I can't find it.

 

[Antni]

Yeah perhaps it wasn't a place everyone went to in the first year as people were still settling in on the new ship and slowly but surely the place started getting customers then word of mouth spread and people decided it was the place to go on the ship.

There could even be more than one like a Ten-port or Ten-starboard but they wasn't as popular as ten forward.

 

[shapeshifter]

A little off topic here but I believe related is that scene in ST5 TFF with the sailing ships Wheel and the forward looking window. ST5 was the first movie to be made in tandem with a ST TV series, TNG season 2, btw, so perhaps we saw the birth of a (in Universe) Ten Forward concept there.

 

[Robert Comsol]

"Ten Forward" wasn't considered to be on the ship before the end of Season One and Andrew Probert's departure.

Here is a link how he felt about the addition of "Ten Forward" on the ship that's essentially his design and creation (however, read the answer to question # 23 at your own risk! I wasn't aware of the "problem" before I read his interview, one of the rare cases where I'd agree that ignorance would have been bliss).

Bob

 

[Bigjoe]

I feel it was always there there we just never got to see it in the first season.

Agreed.

I'm not sure what the rating were like after the first season finished. Maybe they included it to help with future story lines.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

I always thought Ten Forward was at the very front tip of the saucer section. That's pretty much implied in Starship Mine, but that interview makes it look like it's somewhere on the downward slope.

 

[Therin of Andor]

On other Galaxy-class ships, it may have a different name like "Herman's" or "The Saloon," but "Ten-Forward" was chosen for the one on the Enterprise.

Sure, but "Ten-Forward" was also the official deck plans' designation, ie. front of the ship on the tenth level. Richard Arnold told us, at a convention where the first publicity slides for ST V were shown, that the set shown with the old, wooden ship's wheel on the Enterprise-A was called "Five-Forward", in retro homage to TNG's Ten-Forward.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Maybe they included it to help with future story lines.

Exactly. No "maybe" at all. It was partly to do something constructive with Deanna Troi. Denise Crosby's Yar was already gone - and suddenly Gates McFadden's contract was not renewed. Troi's character had been in grave danger of being dropped (in fact, she's missing from quite a few latter-Season One eps, as the writers couldn't figure out how to use her effectively). The production having lost the other two established female regulars, Sirtis was suddenly safe. But still not effective.

So the writers brainstormed sets that would help with Troi's character development: a counselor's office, which they never used much (a simple redress) and a bar, since characters might open up more over casual drinks than in an office. (Of course, Troi doesn't need them to be in a bar to know how her patients feel, but we do.)

And then the producers finally believed Whoopi Goldberg that she was serious about joining TNG - in any role - and a character, based on Texas Guinan, was born.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Guinan

Ironically, when Whoopi made it known she'd be free for an upcoming episode, the writers often hurriedly rewrote Troi counseling scenes into Guinan scenes, much to Marina Sirtis's frustration.

 

[C.E. Evans]

On other Galaxy-class ships, it may have a different name like "Herman's" or "The Saloon," but "Ten-Forward" was chosen for the one on the Enterprise.

Sure, but "Ten-Forward" was also the official deck plans' designation, ie. front of the ship on the tenth level.

Which may not have mattered much on other Galaxy-class ships. In comparison to more personable names other vessels may have used for the area, the name "Ten-Forward" could seem unimaginative, if not boring.

 

[F. King Daniel]

I'm not 100% sure, but didn't it take a bit of fudging for that location to become deck 10? IIRC on the earliest cutaway diagrams of the Enterprise-D, it wasn't.

 

[Trekker4747]

"Ten Forward" wasn't considered to be on the ship before the end of Season One and Andrew Probert's departure.

Here is a link how he felt about the addition of "Ten Forward" on the ship that's essentially his design and creation (however, read the answer to question # 23 at your own risk! I wasn't aware of the "problem" before I read his interview, one of the rare cases where I'd agree that ignorance would have been bliss).

Bob

Sure what Probert's plans were don't line up with what we know but what goes on behind the camera is different than what is going on "in" the camera. Just because Probert didn't intend for 10-Fwd to be there doesn't mean it wasn't there before it was there.

 

[Timo]

...And essentially we're left to mix and match the "onscreen" and "backstage" elements as we please. We know from "All Good Things.." that there was a place called Ten-Forward on the ship at the time of "Encounter at Farpoint" already - but we can also accept that the windows we see from the second season onwards were not there yet, and we can choose to believe that the Ten-Forward of late 2363 and early 2364 was a different facility with different windows.

Perhaps the bow took some damage in an unseen adventure, and the repair work allowed Picard (or Guinan or whomever) to have the Ten-Forward windows redone without extra cost? Perhaps Starfleet introduced new and better sensors on the saucer rim, and the windows were redone for that reason? All sorts of explanations can be whipped up and the visual evidence interpreted to our personal liking.

What is a bit difficult to retroactively throw into the mix would be Guinan being aboard during the first season. She eagerly engages our heroes in conversation in the early episodes of season two; her failure to have done so before would need some pretty imaginative explanation unless we accept she wasn't aboard at all back then.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Trekker4747]

It's pretty established Guinan was not around in Season 1 since she didn't know Tasha Yar. Picard says as much in "Redemption" upon seeing Sela and talking with Guinan, who convinces Picard Sela and possibly the whole deal with the Klingons/Romulans was his fault. Picard says Tasha died a year before Guinan came onto the ship.